Thursday Open Thread: Black Dancers Who Changed American Dance

Janet Collins (March 7, 1917 in New Orleans, Louisiana – May 28, 2003 in Fort Worth, Texas) was a ballet dancer, choreographer, and teacher. She performed on Broadway, in films, and appeared frequently on television. She was among the pioneers of black ballet dancing, one of the few classically trained Black dancers of her generation.

Janet Collins was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and at the age of four moved with her family to Los Angeles, California, where Collins received her first dance training at a Catholic community center. She studied primarily with Carmelita Maracci, Lester Horton, and Adolph Bolm, who were among the few ballet teachers who accepted black students.

In 1932, aged 15, Collins auditioned with success for the prestigious Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, but as she was required to paint her face and skin white in order to be able to perform, she did not join the company. In 1948, she moved to New York and got the chance to dance her own choreography on a shared program at the 92nd Street YMHA.

In 1951 she won the Donaldson Award for best dancer on Broadway for her work in Cole Porter’s Out of This World. She also performed in Aida, Carmen, and was the first Black ballerina to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. She could not tour in parts of the Deep South, owing to her race. In later life, Collins taught modern dance at Balanchine’s School of American Ballet in New York City, and at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York.

Janet Collins struggled repeatedly against racism, which did not spare the world of professional ballet dancing. Not many African-American dancers and performers achieved the successful career she was able to attain, and she paved the way for others to follow. In 1951, she became the first African American to be hired full-time by the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Marian Anderson, the first to sing there, did not perform until 1955. In the year Collins retired, Arthur Mitchell, joined the New York City Ballet.

Janet Collins’ dance reputation today resides primarily in her role in breaking the color barrier; the constraints on Black classical dancers were too strong for her to have a vibrant performing career. However, her original choreography, which she performed in solo tours, was clearly of note, although few records survive. In her late forties, she retired, turning to religion and finding comfort as an oblate in the Benedictine order. She was also an accomplished painter.

Janet Collins died in 2003 at the age of 86, in Fort Worth, Texas.

In 2007, in recognition of Collins’ great work and dedication, her renowned cousin Carmen De Lavallade established the Janet Collins Fellowship to honor aspiring talented ballet dancers. She received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1989.

State and local Republicans have expanded early voting in GOP-dominated areas and restricted it in Democratic areas, an IndyStar investigation has found, prompting a significant change in Central Indiana voting patterns.

From 2008 to 2016, GOP officials expanded early voting stations in Republican dominated Hamilton County, IndyStar’s analysis found, and decreased them in the state’s biggest Democratic hotbed, Marion County. That made voting more convenient in GOP areas for people with transportation issues or busy schedules. And the results were immediate.https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/895634742107930624

The Trump administration’s own actions are triggering double-digit premium increases on individual health insurance policies purchased by many consumers, a nonpartisan study has found.

The analysis released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that mixed signals from President Donald Trump have created uncertainty “far outside the norm,” leading insurers to seek higher premium increases for 2018 than would otherwise have been the case.https://twitter.com/JenGranholm/status/895635438689329153

BoomerGal

LOL!!! Poor Charles. Queenie knows exactly what she’s doing!!

Royal Announcement: William & Kate Will Officially Be King & Queen

Source: Yahoo

~snip~

Take a look at your newest soon-to-be King and Queen of England! Today, Queen Elizabeth officially announced that she will be passing down her crown to her grandson Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton. This, of course, means that the Queen has skipped over her own son, Prince Charles, in the British monarchy’s line of succession. Bummer.

While the drama surrounding the royal family has taken most of the attention away from their policies and image of regal stature, the Queen believes implementing a younger generation than her son is vital for the House of Windsor to thrive in the future.

“Her Majesty realized that William and Kate are the future,” said a palace insider. “She has spent 65 years making sure that the House of Windsor survives, and she sees William and Kate as having the energy and star quality to do the job in a modern world. Queen Elizabeth will always do what is best for the long-term health of the monarchy.”

So how does the King-to-be and forever-Prince feel about the decision? Unfortunately, the decision has caused a rift between William and his father Charles. According to the same insider, their relationship has been strained, but they will get used to it eventually. Just like classic Brits, they’ll push their feelings as deep down as possible!

While I understand Betty’s logic, it’s still kinda fucked up for Charles. Imagine spending almost 70 years of your life on this Earth being groomed to be King, and nothing else. And you have to wait, and wait, and wait…then come to find out it was all for naught.

Yeah, that’s as fucked up as it gets.

Joy

She should have passed the crown to Charles 20 years ago. But I think her main motivation in passing him over is because she doesn’t want Camilla to be queen.

Well damn…I feel bad for Charles!!! One of the only reasons he married Diana was so he could be King!!! But ole Betty said…NOPE!!

BoomerGal

Ole Liz is a G!! LOL!!!

rikyrah

Is this real?

BoomerGal

As real as can be!

Miranda

What foolishness is this?? Why even have this poll??
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In a new poll, half of Republicans say they would support postponing the 2020 election if Trump proposed it
August 10 at 5:00 AM

Critics of President Trump have repeatedly warned of his potential to undermine American democracy. Among the concerns are his repeated assertions that he would have won the popular vote had 3 to 5 million “illegals” not voted in the 2016 election, a claim echoed by the head of a White House advisory committee on voter fraud.

Claims of large-scale voter fraud are not true, but that has not stopped a substantial number of Republicans from believing them. But how far would Republicans be willing to follow the president to stop what they perceive as rampant fraud? Our recent survey suggests that the answer is quite far: About half of Republicans say they would support postponing the 2020 presidential election until the country can fix this problem.https://twitter.com/keithboykin/status/895633673952808960

BoomerGal

Here we go again!

Judge orders new searches for Clinton Benghazi emails

Source: Politico

By JOSH GERSTEIN

08/09/2017 10:48 PM EDT

Nine months after the presidential election was decided, a federal judge is ordering the State Department to try again to find emails Hillary Clinton wrote about the Benghazi attack.

U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that the State Department had not done enough to try to track down messages Clinton may have sent about the assault on the U.S. diplomatic compound on Sept. 11, 2012 — an attack that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

In response to Freedom of Information Act requests, State searched the roughly 30,000 messages Clinton turned over to her former agency at its request in December 2014 after officials searching for Benghazi-related records realized she had used a personal email account during her four-year tenure as secretary.

State later searched tens of thousands of emails handed over to the agency by three former top aides to Clinton: Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan. Finally, State searched a collection of emails the FBI assembled when it was investigating Clinton’s use of the private account and server.

Somebody really needs to tell Kimberly Ellis to fall all the way back. This is ridiculous. You lost heifer, get over it. She is acting like a damn fool. Trump is tweeting threats to Mitch McConnell which should be all over every front page, instead this shit.
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Democratic Fight in California Is a Warning for the National Party
AUG. 9, 2017

SACRAMENTO — For Democrats across the nation, California has offered a bright if lonely light this year. The party controls every statewide office and commands supermajorities in the Legislature. Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders have become national voices, steering the party as it pushes back against President Trump on issues as varied as the environment and immigration.

But in recent weeks, California Democrats have emerged as something else: a cautionary tale for a national party debating how to rebuild and seize back power. Even at a time of overall success, state Democrats are torn by a bitter fight for the party leadership, revealing the kind of divisions — between insiders and outsiders, liberals and moderates — that unsettled the national party last year and could threaten its success in coming years.

“What we are seeing in California is similar to what we are seeing on the national level,” said Betty T. Yee, the Democratic state controller. “If we don’t do our work to really heal our divide, we are going to miss our chance to motivate Democrats.”

The fight pits Eric C. Bauman, a longtime party leader, against Kimberly Ellis, a Bay Area activist. Mr. Bauman won the election by just over 60 votes out of 3,000 cast at the party convention in May, but Ms. Ellis has refused to concede, claiming voting improprieties, like permitting ineligible people to vote for Mr. Bauman.

The party is expected to issue a final ruling on Ms. Ellis’s allegations by Aug. 20; in an interview, she said she would go to court if the party ruled against her. This has left Mr. Bauman, who encountered a barrage of shouts of “not my chairman” when he delivered his victory speech, struggling to put behind him a contest that has been the subject of recounts even as he seeks to position Democrats for a challenging congressional election in 2018.

It’s way past time for Nina Turner to get told. It. Is. WAY. PAST. TIME.

BoomerGal

Party over country!

Miranda

THEY BOTH SAID “FUCK THIS SHIT, I CANT TAKE IT”. She saying “they left for family reasons”…NO THEY DAMN DIDNT. These are “pinnacle of my career” type jobs…nobody is leaving for “family reasons”…unless its “my family threatening to leave me if I stay with this godforsaken doomsday prophecy administration”.https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/895649951384051712

The Pentagon has prepared a specific plan for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea’s missile sites should President Trump order such an attack.

Two senior military officials — and two senior retired officers — told NBC News that key to the plan would be a B-1B heavy bomber attack originating from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.

Pairs of B-1s have conducted 11 practice runs of a similar mission since the end of May, the last taking place on Monday. The training has accelerated since May, according to officials. In an actual mission, the non-nuclear bombers would be supported by satellites and drones and surrounded by fighter jets as well as aerial refueling and electronic warfare planes.

Is she don’t sit her ass all the way down. Pretending like she just thought he was separated from his wife. Bitch please! You run in the same damn circles! You KNEW he was not separated and his wife just had a child in Jan her damn self!

Why he’s just a pig in rut just dropping all these baby making baby mommas. AJ you ain’t the only side chick, there is never only one. I wonder how many kids he had last year? Open Big Book of Shit they Say about Black Men begin reading.

Sam Clovis, Donald Trump’s pick to be chief scientist for the Department of Agriculture, pushed unfounded theories about then-President Barack Obama’s upbringing and called then-Attorney General Eric Holder a “racist black,” a CNN KFile review of Clovis’s writings and radio broadcasts during 2012 and 2013 has found.

-snip-

“For over a decade, Obama allowed his publisher to carry a biography that had him born in Kenya. Only after beginning his pursuit of public office did he ‘correct’ the entry,” Clovis wrote. (The literary agent who edited the biography has said the error was hers, and that she made it with no direct communication with Obama.)

-snip-

In a April 2012 blog post, Clovis expressed his belief that Obama wanted to rule as a dictator and enslave his opponents.

-snip-

In a September 2012 episode of his online radio program “Serious Civics with Sam Clovis,” Clovis observed that Obama appeared “happy” after the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi, Libya that month.

The latter. Manhattanites are to busy shopping at REAL luxury stores, not Trump Tower.

BoomerGal

What a world……………

At least 55 people feared drowned off Yemen after being forced from boat

Source: The Guardian

At least 55 people are feared to have drowned off the coast of Yemen after being forced from a migrant boat by smugglers in the second such incident in two days, the UN migration agency has said.

Five bodies were recovered during an International Organisation for Migration (IOM) beach patrol in Shabwa province, and about 50 more people were missing.

On Wednesday the IOM said 51 people had been “deliberately drowned” in a similar incident. Survivors told the IOM that the smuggler pushed about 120 people into the sea after he thought he had seen some “authority-type” figures off the Yemeni coast. The passengers’ average age was about 16, the IOM said.
…
The IOM says about 55,000 people have left Horn of Africa countries for Yemen since January, with most coming from Somalia and Ethiopia. A third of them are estimated to be women.

I love the women in the replies telling this dude to just keep it moving.
I know some folks go to the gym to socialize, but I ain’t one of them. I get hella pissed when someone wants to talk while I have my earbuds on, man or woman.

AJ Delgado is a silly jump-off trying to pretend like she was duped by
Jason Miller, when in reality she knew the man’s wife was pregnant so
things couldn’t have been that bad between him and his wife. She just wanted the ego boost of taking that man away from his wife. Now she’s on the outside looking in because he’s still with his wife and he’s not going to leave Mrs. Miller for AJ Delgado because paying 1 child support check to AJ Delgado beats paying 2 child support checks to Mrs. Miller.

BoomerGal

Women kill me thinking they can “snatch.” You can’t snatch nobody if they don’t wanna go!!

Town

AJ Delgado knew Jason Miller was married and thought she could take him away from his wife. The man is still with his wife and now AJ is claiming to be the victim of Jason when the bottom line is AJ Delgado spread her legs for Jason Miller with the thought and intent of taking him away from his wife.

Jason Miller likely will never leave Mrs. Miller for AJ Delgado or ever marry AJ Delgado if Mrs. Miller is out of the picture. AJ has already proven to Jason that she’s a slimy bitch, the lowest of the low, untrustworthy, a liar, sneaky and unworthy of being Mrs. Miller…even though he is the exact same as AJ.

You don’t see John Edwards marrying Rielle Hunter, do you? Elizabeth Edwards has been dead for years, so what’s stopping John from popping the question? What’s stopping John is he knows Rielle Hunter is a slimy, low, lying bitch and although he is also those things, he’ll be damned if he marries a woman like that.

GOVCHRIS1988

Wayment!? Bitch tried to take the white version of Jazze Pha from HIS wife????

Bitch hard up for dick, ain’t she?

Town

I think it’s in the minds of most side chicks that they are so special the man will leave his wife/girlfriend to be with her.

When that doesn’t happen, it’s the man’s fault, she was duped, he broke his promises, he lied, side chick feels betrayed, etc.

Well, yes. He duped, lied & betrayed his wife. Why wouldn’t he do that to you, too?

MsKitty

This song is a classic for a reason.

GreenLadyHere

Good MornTin’ Town. :>) **BIG HUG** :>)

All Kindsa POINTS– –

THIS:- — Now she’s on the outside looking in because he’s still with his wife and he’s not going to leave Mrs. Miller for AJ Delgado. . – – –

Trump’s Legal Team No Match for Mueller’s
August 10, 2017 at 8:36 am EDT

Bloomberg: “As Mueller adds experienced prosecutors and broadens his investigation, Trump’s legal team still appears disorganized and understaffed. An army of well-paid lawyers would help the president get in front of the investigation: preparing responses to allegations before hearing about them from prosecutors or reporters, anticipating where Mueller is going, and developing a counternarrative to stymie him. Junior staffers could spend all night researching case law or obstruction of justice and conspiracy statutes; they could be available at a moment’s notice to draft pleadings challenging Mueller’s requests to interview witnesses or gather documents.”

“Instead, Trump’s defense has been almost entirely reactive—responding to the latest bombshell report with uninformed statements by surrogates.”

Also interesting: “Trump’s efforts to enlist the services of a large firm have so far been rebuffed. White-collar experts at three high-powered firms, Sullivan & Cromwell, Steptoe & Johnson, and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, have turned him down, say two people familiar with the matter. Some firms had conflicts that prevented them from taking the job; others worried that Trump wouldn’t follow legal advice, potentially damaging their firms’ reputation, two people said.”

I knew what time it was when it was mentioned that the attorney’s on Mueller’s team…and Mueller himself…had walked away from very lucrative firms to work on the investigation.

Miranda

Yup! They know after this their futures are secured.

rikyrah

They save the republic….. They can write their own ticket

BoomerGal

Yup!

BoomerGal

Yup!!

BoomerGal

Yup!!!!

Miranda

Oh HELL NO!!! NOPE!!! NOPEITY NOPE NOPE NOPE!! The establishment GOP trying to goad Trump into “leaving” so they can holler he was never a republican anyway! Dems better tie that rock around both their necks! Bill Kristol and co may not like it but he is THEIRS. All THEIRS! We see you Kristol, trying to get him to “quit you”..NOPE!
———————
Is Trump Preparing to Leave the Republican Party?
August 10, 2017 at 8:13 am EDT

Trump has been building the case against his fellow Republicans for some time, but it came to a head late last month as Obamacare repeal began its path in the Senate… Trump’s short-term target was the filibuster and its most important defender, Mitch McConnell. But the beginnings of the broader argument against the GOP are all right there, in 140 characters at a time. Republicans are fools, they’re impotent, and everyone’s laughing at them.

Senate Republicans won’t ‘ditch Mitch’ anytime soon, just as they won’t be bullied into supporting the agenda of a president with 30-something-percent approval ratings if it can’t find consensus. That’s because all of them had political careers long before Trump became a serious force within the party. They figure, with some reason, that they’ll have careers or legacies long after Trump has left the White House. But if Republicans have increasingly little incentive to tolerate Trump, he may make the same calculation about the GOP, the party’s conservative policy agenda, and the conservative movement as a whole.http://www.weeklystandard.com/white-house-watch-is-trump-preparing-to-leave-the-republican-party/article/2009222

adept2u

They’ll propose a tour among the new Trump Party loyalist taking lists of their demands and telling us how we should listen to them.

She’s probably sitting on Facebook right now lurking on Jason Miller & his wife’s pages, seething every time she sees a picture of Jason smiling & happy with his wife and kids…the family vacation photos, the BBQ photos, the photos the wife posted up showing Jason around the house. Oh yes, she’s lurking and doesn’t like it one bit because she thinks she’s supposed to be in those photos, not Mrs. Miller.

This is family peeps. I didn’t want to say anything to my elderly aunt but him being missing this long is not good. The police say he just disappeared. How the fuck does someone disappear without a trace? Where is his work truck?

Paul Manafort appears to be the source who revealed to congressional investigators that he attended a meeting last year with Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer promising damaging information against Hillary Clinton.

The former Trump campaign chairman’s home was raided late last month by FBI agents seeking evidence in a widening probe of his activity before the election — including his financial ties to Russian oligarchs — after his bank records were subpoenaed, reported Bloomberg Politics.

Federal investigators have been examining allegations that Manafort laundered money from Russia Eastern Europe through New York real estate, according to two sources familiar with that inquiry.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is now investigating those transactions, along with the purchase of Trump properties by wealthy Russians over the past decade and disgraced national security adviser Mike Flynn’s foreign entanglements.